This Hudson Valley Foie Gras was AMAZING. Every single part of this dish was unbelievable from the rich and flavorful duck liver slice, to the perfectly textured honeycrisp apple (expired patent apple) bread pudding it was sitting on, to the surrounding Hen of the Woods mushrooms and port compote which consisted partly of apricots. If you mashed everything together and consumed it as a slurry, the concoction would taste like a wonderful symphony of flavors playing Bach's Partita No. 2 in D Minor. OK maybe not, but it will taste pretty damn good because all the flavors complement each other beautifully. I know it might be a bit sinful to pay $20 for a tiny slice of force-fed duck liver, but that one guy who loses 20% of his flock of geese because he tricks them into believing they are not in captivity so that they will gorge themselves without coercion is so far away in Europe that I'll have to settle for indulging in this once in a while. FAVORITE APPETIZER HERE SO FAR.
